


to be alone with you

by materialism



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Bisexual Diego Hargreeves, Coming Out, Coming of Age, M/M, Pre-Canon, Pseudo-Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:02:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26020009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/materialism/pseuds/materialism
Summary: And there’s the matter of the whole guy thing. It’s the constant tug of war in Diego’s mind, a battle where no matter what, he feels like the loser. He knows he likes girls. And there are guys his age who have girlfriends, who have kissed girls, held their hands, gone farther. But he can’t deny that he likes boys anymore. And here he is, lying beside his brother, who has impossibly soft skin, who has a world of demons just beneath the surface.(Diego likes girls, but he might like boys too. And there's also this thing with Ben? It's a lot to handle.)
Relationships: Ben Hargreeves/Diego Hargreeves, Diego Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves
Comments: 11
Kudos: 63





	to be alone with you

**Author's Note:**

> hey friends, this is my first delve back into fandom in a really long time. yeah, there's incest, sorry about that. it's about the yearning though, and feeling confusing things about your siblings! if it helps, diego grapples with it a lot. if it's any consolation, this is much more of a story about diego coming to terms with being bisexual than anything else.

When the gym employees having beers after hours, and they let Diego join them, sometimes the conversation gets a bit too sleepover for his liking. They start telling each other deep secrets men aren’t supposed to express, but in a roundabout way, the tougher the better. When the subject of first times comes around, he tells his buddies at the gym his first time was with a girl in the neighborhood. He fills in convincing details - a girl something like Eudora, curvy, bright eyed, a little bit of sass and a lot of not putting up with his bullshit. He talks about her cornering him and taking him to her place, him not telling his parents where he was going, and them doing the deed with her grandmother watching telenovelas in the room down the hall. (He tries to leave out that he comes from money, if he can help it; he’d never seen an apartment like hers before. He earns everything he has now, anyway.) Her climbing on top of him and pulling off her shirt, no bra underneath, and laughing at how wide his eyes must have been. How he had to sneak out because if her father came home and found them, he’d be beaten to death. (With his powers, fat chance.)

All of that did happen, so it’s not that far off. He’s just fudging the numbers a bit. The order. 

He didn’t kiss a girl until he was seventeen, but he did kiss someone before then.

-

Diego likes all the seasons, but he likes winter the best. He likes how cold it gets in the city, on the scant occasions the members of the Academy are allowed out. He likes how Mom decorates the house, and steadies the ladder for her so she doesn’t fall. It would only mean a day in the repair shop with Pogo and Dad, but he still endows pain onto her. He supposes at thirteen he should stop worrying about her, like Vanya and Allison seem to have, but he doesn’t think he’s ever going to stop worrying. She’s so beautiful. When he was four, he thought he was going to marry her one day. He told Luther, who told Five, and the both of them made fun of him for two weeks.

He’s stopped telling his siblings about things like that.

During the holiday season, Allison gets fashion magazines advertising clothing that she knows she’s not allowed to even dream of. She sneaks them in with Pogo’s help and spends hours in her room, looking through pages of clothes and shoes and circling what she wants. Sometimes, she’s so bold as to do it in the living room where anyone could see. When Diego looks over her shoulder, he sees a girl with a black shirt cut so low you can almost see her nipples, her breasts pressed close together, combined with a yellow plaid skirt that falls just below her butt, revealing what seems like miles of legs. Her posture is kind of slumped - all the models in these magazines seem to do that - with her elegant hands on her waist, emphasizing her hourglass shape. Allison has circled the skirt.

“You okay? You’re breathing kind of heavy,” Allison says, genuinely concerned. Thirteen has made her largely bitchy, but she can still be nice sometimes.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” Diego says. She looks up at him, eyes quizzical.

Ben, who is reading beside her, looks over at the page. “Dad would never let you wear that. It is nice, though.”

Diego laughs and Allison whips her head around to glare at him. Just like Ben, diplomatic.

But it’s not just the magazines. Girls are cute in their winter coats when they go out. If they’re ever allowed to watch TV, Diego has definitely commandeered the TV for an hour on Wednesdays to watch striking women in well fitted suits fight crime in their own way, not with superpowers, but with detective work and grit. Klaus steals magazines whenever they sneak out, the adult ones behind the counter, and Diego feels overwhelmed and a little bit sick when he sees those girls, breasts on full display, legs spread, but he’s also fascinated too. The only girls he really knows are his sisters - Vanya, with her moodiness and constant violin playing; Allison, with her confidence and aspirations for the screen. Sometimes they feel like his sisters, but sometimes they don’t. The house plays tricks with his head, he thinks. 

He sometimes looks at Vanya and wonders what what she looks like with her shirt off. (Not her bra - that much flesh in the flesh would terrify him.) Probably not like much - she’s boxy and boyish like Ben, not quite as broad as the rest of the boys but not all convex lines like Allison. (Concave? He doesn’t remember which. Both, maybe.) He knows that it’s not an appropriate thought to have about your sister, but again, sometimes it doesn’t feel like she’s his sister. Sometimes they don’t feel like siblings at all. Diego thinks Dad designed it on purpose like that sometimes. A training camp with recruits rather than a big happy family. He still pretends that Mom is real sometimes, but he knows that other kids have moms with interior lives. He should still pretend that they’re related. It’s hard sometimes though. 

Besides, it’s not like he doesn’t see how Luther and Allison look at each other sometimes. How they sneak off by themselves, even if it’s just to the roof. After Five disappears, Ben stays up to see if he’s coming home, but when it becomes clear he isn’t, he stays up to make sure Luther and Allison get home okay. Diego thinks it’s partially so he can read downstairs undisturbed, but the nights he himself as spent with them in companionable silence. It’s difficult for Diego to read books - the letters get mixed up, and it’s hard for him to sound out the words - but Ben never gets angry. He presses himself against Diego and takes the time to reorder the words for him, or simply waits until Diego’s done with the page before turning to the next one, even with comic books. He feels warm through his nightclothes, still smaller than Diego, and Diego’s just leaning in to catch what’s going on next. He imagines a girl pressed up against him like this, but sometimes he doesn’t.

He doesn’t have to wonder what Ben looks like without his shirt on - any of the other boys, really. Five had been shy about his body, the only way in which he was self conscious. Luther, a head and a half taller than everyone else, walks around shirtless all the time. Klaus has decided that being a boy is overrated, so if he’s not wearing Grace’s clothing or the uniform, he doesn’t have a shirt on (or pants, yuck). Diego can take it or leave it - he prefers to be covered up but for swimming it’s a necessary evil. Despite the tentacled beasts within him, Ben braves the bare air, and Diego’s breath sometimes catches a little when he sees him come out from the pool after swimming laps or simply changing into or out of clothes when he walks by Ben’s room next door to his own. They’ll exchange a smile, sometimes talking, sometimes not. Diego’s chest feels tight.

It’s because Ben’s so brave. That’s it. In winter, they both keep their shirts on, and he’s too busy thinking about girls in fashion spreads to concentrate on what any of that might mean.

-

“Have you ever thought about guys?”

They’re in the car, on their way back from a mission, when Klaus brings this question up. His hair is getting a little too long, the longest it can go before Mom expertly cuts it off to a men’s regular. He didn’t do too well today. He seemed distracted the entire time, and now that it’s just them and a sleeping Ben, his distraction is coming to a head. 

“Uh, sure, as much as I think about anything else,” Diego says, because it seems like the safe thing to say. 

Klaus sighs, dragging a hand over his face. He looks young, younger than they already are. “No, I mean…do you…you know how girls are great?”

Girls are really great. In the scant years since sneaking peeks at Allison’s magazines, Diego has graduated to a special kind of alone time whenever he possibly can. He very desperately wants a girlfriend. “Yeah, I do.”

“Well…sometimes I think that stuff about guys,” Klaus says. “None of you, don’t worry. Just…I want to kiss guys like I want to kiss girls. And maybe other types of people too. I don’t know. It’s a big mess in my head. Please don’t hate me.”

Diego just looks at him, wondering who replaced his brother with this unsure, insecure kid. Klaus has never given a shit about what any of them have thought. He hasn’t cared what they thought about him wearing high heels, or painting his nails, or wearing Mom’s clothes and makeup. He hasn’t cared what they thought about him smoking or taking liquor from Dad’s bar. He hasn’t cared about what they thought the porn mags he has stashed under his bed. He’s quick to point out Luther and Allison’s thing whenever he’s given shit for existing. So why is he starting to care now? Diego’s not going to stop loving him.

“I don’t hate you,” Diego says slowly, not wanting to stutter on this one. He needs to be clear here. Diego isn’t sure he’s ever actually met a guy who likes guys, but he’s not about to scare Klaus off like Luther does with everyone else. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay. It makes sense that I’d be like this. I mean, I am the person that I am, wouldn’t my preferences follow? It’s not like I care or anything, just telling people is strange. The fact that I have to tell anyone at all. Besides, I don’t think I’m the only one out of us, anyway.”

Something in Diego jolts. “What?”

“Well, we’re all kind of fucked up. Luther and Allison don’t just go upstairs to ‘talk,’ if you get what I’m saying. Who knows where Five is. I think Vanya’s like me, but you can’t get a word out of her edgewise. And then there’s you, which I wasn’t sure about, but -”

“W-what do you mean there’s me?” Diego says. He feels very hot under the collar all of a sudden. 

“I just thought - you know, you’re always…” Klaus sighs, clearly following some train of thought that he’s not expressing to Diego. “Never mind.”

“I’m not like that,” Diego says. He does not say, I’m not like you, because that’s not the right thing to say. “Uh, sorry to disappoint?”

Klaus waves him off, patting him on the shoulder. “Thanks for not passing judgment. I don’t know who else I’d tell, really. Well, I tried to tell Ben, but he got all shy and strange. I wonder about him, too.”

“Should we really be having this conversation in the car?” Diego says, suddenly painfully aware of their surroundings. Why are they talking about Ben when he’s right here? Why does it always come back to Ben?

“That divider is soundproof and besides, I don’t think the driver cares enough about the sexual whims of two teenage boys to report this back to Dad.”

Diego rolls his eyes; Klaus always has such a wordy way of phrasing things. Diego’s always made up for his lack of book smarts in training and on the battlefield. And Ben’s usually around to translate more complicated phrases. Five had never had patience with him like Ben does. It isn’t a huge comfort that the only other person in the house who lacks book smarts is Luther, because he makes up for it in other ways. “Alright, well, like I said, I don’t hate you. It’s kind of obvious, anyway - let’s not forget about you getting your jaw wired shut in the heels incident.”

“A four inch heel is too high for me. I don’t fit in her shoes anymore anyway.” A pause as he looks out the window. “You watching wrestling tonight?”

“Yeah, of course,” Diego says. It’s a pretty good match tonight - not a women’s match, so his imaginary girlfriend Trish Stratus would not be on, but some good dudes on for sure. 

“You like wrestling a lot, huh?” Klaus says, smiling in the way he does when he knows something Diego doesn’t know. He does that a lot. 

“Yes? Klaus, what are you getting at?” The joke’s on him somehow, and he was a confidante just moments ago. He doesn’t understand so much.

Klaus seems to realize himself and sighs. “Just think about wrestling. Like, what it’s about.”

The car comes to a stop, and Ben wakes up with a jerk. He blinks slowly, as if snapping out of a trance. The sleep is still in his face, making it softer than usual, and his eyes look world weary. His hair’s getting long like Klaus’, but he wants to brush it out of Ben’s face, not cut it like he does with Klaus’. Dad will no doubt order Mom to give him some sort of monstrosity, something that he’ll try to hide with hats and hoods for weeks afterward. Diego’s hand reaches out, but falls back at his side when he catches Klaus looking at him with that stupid look.

“How long was I out for?” Ben asks, voice also sleepy. He yawns halfway through.

“Whole ride,” Klaus says. “And you snored. Kidding! Kidding,” he laughs when Ben glares at him. “Let’s get out, I’m starving.” 

And with that, Klaus is out and clambering into the house, thus ending a very confusing conversation. He wants to ask Ben to clarify. What does Klaus mean about thinking about wrestling? What does he mean he’s not the only one? But that would mean breaking his confidence. But then again, he did already tell Ben…who clammed up apparently. That isn’t terribly like him. Diego’s the clammer here. 

He can’t say anything. Things are already awkward.

“You okay, buddy?” Ben says, smiling. Diego feels the urge to reach out again, but he holds his hand at his side. 

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Diego says.

“Cool,” Ben says, in that quiet, assured way he does. Diego doesn’t know if he thinks about boys, or girls, or anyone. He’s never really talked about it. He’s not exactly shy, but he’s definitely the most private of them all. Not everyone is Klaus, spilling their guts all over the place. (Well, Ben kind of spills his guts, or spills everyone else’s. Reluctantly. He’d rather be reading or eating.) “We should go get some food.”

“Yeah, we should,” Diego says, and Ben is out of the car with one last concerned look in Diego’s direction.

Sometimes Diego wishes he got that look directed at him all the time. But it’s reserved for all of them. Diego isn’t that special.

-

It’s two weeks later when Diego wakes up starving. This isn’t an uncommon occurrence - ever since he hit his growth spurt, his late night cravings have been enormous, but his new size makes going down the stairs considerably more challenging than it was before. He lies awake for a few minutes, willing his stomach to stop growling because he’s certain Klaus ate all the chocolate ice cream, the bastard. However, this does absolutely nothing to stop him from being hungry. With a sigh, he climbs out of bed and creeps down the stairs to the best of his ability.

The light is already on in the kitchen. 

On the floor is Ben, just in a T-shirt and shorts, eating a bowl of cereal balanced precariously in his lap while reading yet another one of his comic books - his beat up copy of the fourth volume of Sandman. Diego likes those books - the writer stays the same but the artist is always different. Sometimes he’ll read over Ben’s shoulder until Ben beckons him to scoot over and be closer to him. He’ll talk about how Allison would kill for some of Death’s outfits, maybe go for that hair, but Diego envisions her dyeing her hair blonde as soon as she’s out of the house. He likes that there are seven Endless like there are seven of them. He’s sure Ben’s got theories on who fits with who, but he hasn’t asked. (Klaus is definitely Delirium, though.) He doesn’t have much of a grasp on the inner workings, no matter how much Ben explains the plot to him. He mostly lets Ben’s voice weave in and out of him.

“Hey,” Diego whispers.

That noise, though low, is enough to shock Ben, who just barely catches the bowl as it falls. A little bit of milk splashes out and onto the floor, which Ben covers with his sock. (A sacrifice - he hates wet socks, but better than face Dad’s wrath.) His dark eyes look up at Diego curiously, a hint of suspicion, an expression usually saved for Luther; Diego doesn’t like it directed at him. It’s gone in a flash though and replaced with warmth. Ben puts the cereal bowl and comic book down to his left side and places his hands in his lap, smiling.

“Hey,” Ben says. “Can’t sleep?”

Diego nods. “Hungry. What do you have?”

“Mom hides Lucky Charms in the top cabinet. She buys it once a month, one box, and stows it away. I think her programming’s evolving.”

“Cool, why are you up?”

“Luther and Allison are out again. Force of habit, I guess. They came back kind of drunk last time. Join me?”

Diego ends up pilfering a bag of pretzels from the junk cabinet (how has he not known about this?) and sitting on the floor beside Ben. He’s content to read over Ben’s shoulder for a while, but they eventually start to talk, talk in the way they only can when not being watched by the others. These moments make Diego happy. It’s like that weight that’s constantly on Ben’s shoulders is lessened or released entirely and he can be himself. He’s witty, he’s funny - hell, he’s a little mean and it’s great. They make fun of Luther and a little bit of Klaus but not really because Klaus, even if he’s annoying, is at least not afraid to be himself. They’re talking about a lot of things tonight - including a recent mission that didn’t go so well. Ben still has bandages on him from where the tentacles retreated, an unusual departure from their usual seamless retraction. Diego seems him wince when he moves, just slightly, and it makes him angry at Dad for constantly putting him in danger. For putting them all in danger.

“Hey Diego, can I ask you a question?” Ben asks.

“Yeah, sure, what’s up?” Diego smiles, but Ben is shy again. Dammit.

“I…Do you…Nah, it’s stupid,” Ben says.

It can’t be stupid. “No, what?”

“Do you think I’m a monster?”

Diego wants to laugh because it’s a question he could have asked when he was six, but Ben is dead serious right now. Diego’s not about to endanger this level of trust because he’s an idiot. “No, why?”

“Sometimes I feel like one,” Ben says. 

“Y-you can’t help what you can do,” Diego says, cursing his stutter betraying his nerves. “We were all born like this. I-i-it’s not your fault.”

Ben sighs. “That’s not exactly what I mean.”

“What do you mean then?” Diego shoves his hand into the pretzel bag and concentrates on finding whole pretzels, only to find it’s pretty much just crumbs left.

“There’s not really room in the family for more than one,” Ben says, after a heavy silence. He’s not looking at Diego. Goddammit, why isn’t he looking at Diego?

“I’m sure there is, whatever it is,” Diego says. He thinks he knows what it is, but he’s not going to make Ben say it if he’s not ready. This is as close as he ever gets to facing his demons. He already faces the literal demons inside him every day.

Ben looks up at him, eyes flicking down, then up again. He smooths his hair back, already growing back from the promised haircut, and sighs, shoulders heaving. “You’re not allowed to be mad.”

“I won’t -” but he doesn’t get to finish his sentence, because Ben grabs him by the face and hauls him in for a kiss.

He’s obviously never done this, so it’s a little awkward and Diego can feel his teeth. Then again, Diego’s never done this before, so he doesn’t have anything to compare it to. He should pull away, he knows he should. They’re not like Allison and Luther, flanked on either side of him with identical marks on their necks. Diego always feels a little queasy looking at them, how smug their faces are. They’re not like that, so why doesn’t he want to stop? Diego leans into the sensation, seizing the moment for once. It’s so easy in battle, so why shouldn’t it be easy everywhere else? It’s the least he can do for himself. And then Ben makes this little noise and oh, that’s something he’s never felt before, this heat in his gut for someone physically present. He tries to take a little control of the moment, and Ben lets him take the lead, all his guppy guts probably run out the second he pulled Diego in. Maybe this is what Allison and Luther do, but it’s not like he’s going to tell anyone. Besides, they’re two boys. It’s just a fluke.

One good thing about his power is that he could probably kiss someone forever, but Ben eventually has to come up. His cheeks are a little pink and he’s breathless. His eyes are so dark. (“You have eyes like a shark, Benny,” Allison teased him once, playing with his hair. He swatted her away, telling her to buzz off.) They hover near each other, arms still looped in place, faces still close together. 

“Was that okay?” Ben asks, less nerves, more inquiry. As if he’s been planning this. 

“Y-yeah,” Diego says, without really checking in with himself. “Was that okay for you?”

“I did it, didn’t I?” Ben looks away, looks back at him. “So we don’t tell anyone.”

“Okay,” Diego says. He sags in Ben’s grasp, feeling his arms deadweight 

“And this is the first and last time that happens.” He unravels himself from Diego, getting up and putting his bowl in the sink. He offers a hand and pulls Diego up; Diego feels stupid for always being surprised by how strong he is. He keeps a hold of Diego’s hand, thumb rubbing the skin between Diego’s thumb and forefinger. “Deal?”

“Deal,” Diego says. “Last time.”

-

Except, of course, it’s not.

The first time it happens after that, Diego chalks it up to being a little bored, a little pent-up, and Ben being the only sane person available. Klaus is definitely tall and handsome in ways that Diego is envious of, but he seems out of reach for some reason. Diego supposes if he’s going to go down this frankly ridiculous road (by law and for all intents and purposes his brother, his brother, his fucking brother) that he should probably hit up Vanya (barely his goddamn sister, with the way they all exclude her), but then he thinks about what Klaus said about her being like him and pauses. She would never go for it anyway, the royal sulker. Tons of other guys his age go to school, hook up with girls there, and he’ll eventually get out there in the real world and start hooking up with girls himself. It’s just something to pass the time, Ben’s hands on the small of his back, his lips on his neck, Diego’s hands in his hair. They’ll both grow out of it.

They don’t, though. Normally, they’re too shy to press into each other’s space, fear thrumming Diego’s veins, the weight of wrongness heavy on his shoulders, but they eventually give in. Diego spends those times halfway between nausea and elation. He’s so angry at himself, that he’s just as bad as One and Three, but there’s some small part of him, the part of him that hates the man who claims to be their father, that doesn’t give a shit. He and Ben, when they do give in, don’t cross any boundaries beyond kissing and touching above the clothes - there are some things that should not be crossed, the both of them seem to have decided independently of each other. But sometimes when Diego is watching wrestling (yes, he has thought about it, rather more than he wants to) he thinks about skin to skin contact. These men are scripted to battle it out. Is that the only way he can touch another boy’s skin? 

Diego’s room is a little bit bigger than Ben’s, so they usually meet in there. There has to be some sort of pretense to their encounters, so usually it’s some sort of junk food or a game or yet another comic book from Ben’s collection. Then it’s usually some sort of magnetism, just a matter of time until they’re glued to each other’s sides, arms around each other’s waists. Today it’s no different, practically fused to one another. It would certainly be a mess if someone were to walk in right now, though he’s pretty sure Klaus knows. Diego’s brain, the most primal part of him, wants to push Ben down, climb on top of him, paw at his shirt - but no. He presses a nervous kiss on Ben’s temple and is about to back off when he feels Ben’s hand on the small of his back beneath his shirt. They don’t do this. It’s never skin. Ben moves his hand in a circle, dragging his fingers over the notches in Diego’s spine. 

“This okay?” Ben says, not looking up from the book. “You’re panicking.”

“Y-you’re not even looking at m-muh-me, you don’t kn-know,” Diego says, betraying himself, as usual.

Ben looks up this time. “Even if you hadn’t stutter spiraled yourself into a frenzy just now, I can sense it. Like I haven’t been paying attention to you since we were babies.”

Diego doesn’t know what to make of that. “Y-y-you paid attention to m-me?”

“You didn’t cry when the demons came out,” Ben says, shrugging. “I guess I was meant to follow you forever after that.”

Ben’s hand snakes around as much as it can, fingers brushing Diego’s stomach. He jumps at the touch. Ben’s body temperature is warmer than everyone else’s, something he knows from their yearly physicals, so it makes sense that he’d jump. But maybe it’s just the sensation, too. He likes that their skin is touching, and that’s probably bad, but he can think about that later. 

The touches continue until they don’t. Ben stops coming to his room all of a sudden, averts his gaze when they’re at the breakfast table. In battle they bounce off each other well, the only time they communicate, but it’s cold as ice the second they get back home. Diego doesn’t know what he did, doesn’t know what he did, doesn’t know what he fucking did. He can’t sleep and starts slipping up at practice. Ben starts to talk to Luther more. 

“Hey Vanya,” Diego says, one day after breakfast is done. “Play violin for me.”

Her eyes light up.

-

“Diego,” says the voice that echoes all the time in his dreams lately, except it’s aloud. “Diego, wake up.”

Diego wakes up with a start to see the vague outline of Ben, sans shirt, standing beside his bed. They haven’t shared space aside from training missions in months. Luther rules Ben’s world now, and Ben follows him around like a puppy, wanting to impress him. Diego has allowed himself to fade into the background, always second place, pretending he doesn’t think about Ben’s hands all the time, boney and too big for his arms. Those warm hands are on him before he can really react, pushing Diego over to the far edge of the bed as he climbs in with him. 

“What are you -?” Diego says.

“Klaus is crying and he doesn’t think it is, but it’s really loud,” Ben says. “I knocked on his door and tried to get in, but it’s locked. I don’t want to be there. Let me stay?”

Diego wants to say something bitter, like how he should be crawling in with Luther right now with how much he’s been sucking up to him. How he’s forgotten about him, but he knows he shouldn’t be jealous about that, that it’s not right. The Vanya plan, the whole getting close to her thing, was partially to anger Ben, but of course that has backfired. Now he has Vanya brushing shoulders with him (as best as she can, she stopped growing long before the rest of them did), and smiling at him while she bats her huge doe eyes and revels in the attention, and Ben hasn’t noticed. He cares about Vanya, he does, but she doesn’t understand what it’s like for the rest of them. She’s ordinary. Ben is anything but. Vanya doesn’t make something in Diego’s stomach burn when she so much as gives him a cursory glance. That’s Ben. He knows it’s not right, but he doesn’t know how to make it stop.

Diego decides to not say anything, only shifting over so he’s facing away from Ben, leaving him room. Ben shifts so he’s comfortable and they lie together in silence. It’s silent for so long that Diego wonders if Ben has fallen asleep when suddenly there’s a full force of warmth pressed against his back, a slender arm snaked around his waist. They’re both really too big for this, two gangly sixteen year old boys in a twin sized bed, but Diego relishes the feeling of Ben’s body pressed up against is. He wants there to be no barrier of his T-shirt, for their skin to coexist in this moment, but that’s too bold to ask. He’s too scared. Ben is already giving him this, after months of no contact. He’ll take what he can get.

“I got scared,” Ben says, as if he’s continuing a sentence he’d been saying just moments prior.

“Oh y-yeah?” Diego says. He’s mostly got the stutter under control now, but Ben always brings it out in him. 

“It got too real. I could pretend, before. Like it was just me being curious or something. But I started thinking about it all the time. So I thought backing off would help. But it didn’t. Then you started talking to Vanya and I got really angry at you, so there’s that.” 

“I thought you didn’t notice,” Diego admits, feeling sheepish all of a sudden.

“Of course I noticed. What part of ‘I watch you all the time’ do you not get?” He breathes into Diego’s clothed shoulder, the heat of his exhalation filtering through the cloth.

“Oh,” Diego says. “Well, I…I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” Ben says. “I’ve been going over this for days in my head, like, ‘what if he kicks me out?’ And how much that would kill me if you did. But I figured I had to do something. I can’t stay away. I don’t want to.”

Diego deliberates for a second, a split second, then makes a choice. “Hey, uh, back up for a second. It’s nothing bad, don’t look at me like that -”

“If you don’t want me here, that’s fine -” Ben starts, looking crestfallen, oh goddammit, but Diego cuts him off with a finger on his lips. 

“I know you think you know everything about me, but your power isn’t reading minds,” Diego says, but he says it through removing his shirt and chucking it to a corner of the room. He lifts an arm, brave in ways he’s usually not. “I think they call it little spoon?” - his attempt at a joke.

“You have three brain cells,” Ben says, but he says it with such fondness that Diego wants to keel over. 

He settles into Diego’s arms, his slender frame fitting well with Diego’s stockier body. It’s too hot under the covers, way too hot, but Diego would feel too exposed if they took the covers off. Ben’s facing him, and he nuzzles in a way that’s so light that Diego would think he was imagining it if he didn’t know better. Diego wants this moment to last forever. Diego wants this moment to end immediately, because it feels too good, better than he deserves.

“You’re thinking so loudly,” Ben says. He’s talking against the skin of Diego’s neck, and it’s almost like he’s kissing him there. “It doesn’t suit you.”

Diego knows he’s not a standout, that he’s second best. He’s not strong like Luther, or charming like Allison and Klaus, or intelligent like Five and Ben, or even musically talented like Vanya. Ben could’ve latched onto anyone. He’s close enough to Klaus that Diego has wondered about them too, their shared glances, brushed hands when they walk down hallways. And there’s the matter of the whole guy thing. It’s the constant tug of war in Diego’s mind, a battle where no matter what, he feels like the loser. He knows he likes girls. And there are guys his age who have girlfriends, who have kissed girls, held their hands, gone farther. But he can’t deny that he likes boys anymore. And here he is, lying beside his brother, who has impossibly soft skin, who has a world of demons just beneath the surface. 

“I don’t think Klaus locks his door,” Diego says. “You probably could’ve just pushed it open.”

“I wanted to be here with you.” Ben tilts Diego’s head and moves to meet him, kissing him on the mouth, just like that.

Usually when they do this, it’s hot and desperate, boredom wringing itself out in their bodies, but this is deliberate, slow. Like Ben came in here to do this, and it occurs to Diego that he probably did. He presses into it before Ben has a chance to move away or change his mind. He doesn’t want Ben to change his mind. He likes that he’s the one Ben has come to. Diego puts his hand on the small of Ben’s back and presses them together, chest to chest, the warmth engulfing him.

“I love you,” Ben says, because he can say that. He’s open about things, so unlike the rest of them.

“I love you too,” Diego says, because it’s dark and this is the only way he’s allowed. It’s enough. He’ll do it again next time this happens. 

-

There is no next time. Three days later, Ben dies in a horrible accident that is all of their faults, but his most of all. He was the lookout. He should have saved him but now it’s too late and Ben is gone and he feels like he’s free falling forever. None of them have anything to say to each other. The house is haunted. 

(Diego considers asking Klaus if Ben is around, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t know if that would make the pain go away or if it would just make it worse.)

He leaves home after that. He falls into dating girls after that, what he was meant to do. It’s easy for him. He knows he’s good looking, charming, even uses the knife-bending thing as a party trick. When he meets an officer named Eudora on his first day at the academy, he sees Ben’s eyes in hers, and his heart stutters. He tries and tells himself that her personality is the reason he talked to her in the first place. When he presses her down into her lovely queen sized bed (much better than his busted full at his apartment), he wishes for flat planes and slightly off breath and feels sick afterward. When she dumps him after he drops out of the academy, it serves him right.

The gym takes him in, takes pity on him. When he’s part of the boys, shooting the shit, it’s easy to lie about his first kiss, his first fuck. He can keep that secret part of him buried, the one he knows about, that he accepts, but that he can't tell anyone about.

At least they’re not asking him about his first love. His secret died with him.


End file.
